I remember at 9

I remember moving to New Mexico just before my ninth birthday. Until we found a house we lived in an apartment that made me wary of apartments for years. I remember my mom did a lot to make sure that birthday was a special one though.

I memorized all three verses of “I am a Child of God” while waiting for the bus the month of school we lived in that apartment before moving into our house. The school I went to for that month was a closed school and I was used to open schools. It felt very confined. My teacher that month was Mr. Near (or was it Far?). After we bought our house (where I got my own room and we had orange shag carpet in part of the house, green shag in another part, and carpet in the kitchen), I went to Chaparral Elementary and my teacher was Mrs. Stupin. A student was assigned to help show me around but she didn’t do a very good job. A kid named Michael Rains in my class did a better job and he and I became good friends all through elementary school.

The school gave me some tests and started pulling me out for Enrichment during the week. The Enrichment teacher was weird. She had us put on a production of “Midsummer’s Night Dream” and I don’t like that play to this day. They also started sending me to Mrs. Armendariz’ classroom in the for math.

I started playing the flute that year. I played through my sophomore year of high school. I still have the sign my parents made to wish me luck the night of our first concert.

I remember playing Oregon Trail on the green screened Apple IIe in our classroom. When I taught school it was really fun for me to watch my students play the latest version of it. The same things in the game were still fun for the next generation.